


Banshee

by monkiimax



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Banshee Powers, Bullying, Depression, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-02-19 15:10:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2392928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkiimax/pseuds/monkiimax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Banshee: Spirit of a wailing woman who is heard as a sign that someone is about to die." It is an old legend that almost nobody keeps hearing or believes in. But what if they are real? What if they are not spirits or only women who wail at the sight of death? What if you were one, but everyone confused the signals and thought you were just crazy?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Psychotic Child

Chapter 1: Psychotic Child

Nagisa was always a hyperactive child. His mother usually joked about his ilimited energy and how he would always leave her exhausted at the end of the day. Until de age of 5 Nagisa was a normal kid with blonde hair, pinkish eyes and a permanent smile up his face. Sometimes his parents would get worried when they noticed his son talking a little too fast and with no coherence between words. Other times, they became worried when he stopped talking at all and draw in silence for hours, but their worries weren´t any different of any other parent in the world.

When he turned 6 his father signed him into a swimming class near their house. Nagisa couldn´t choose the color of his swimming suit but still he was able to select the design of his goggles, which were the most colorful and bright goggles of the store. Nagisa was good at making friends, so after his first class his mother wasn´t surprised when her son told her about all the kids in his class and how cool everyone was.

"And there is an older boy." he said during dinner between bites. "His sister is in my class but he swims on the other side of the pool. He is really fast, and he has funny teeth."

His mother and father exchanged looks and smiled at each other. Maybe the influence of an older friend would help Nagisa to gain some maturity or at least become a good role model in the case it was a constant and responsible swimmer.

"What is his name honey?" his mother asked.

Nagisa thought about it for a moment. "His name is Rin, but he gets annoyed when someone tells him he has a girly name. I told him I didn´t mind. I also have a girl´s name, right mommy?"

His three older sisters giggled at the comment.

"We are happy you are making friends Nagisa." said his father as he rubbed the little boy´s hair playfully. Nagisa giggled and kept eating his food.

The next day Nagisa woke up but didn´t got out of bed. His mother, suspecting he was feeling sick, left him sleep in for the day.

The second day Nagisa stood up from the bed but didn´t speak a word or drew a thing.

The third day his parents were called from school arguing Nagisa had fainted during P.E.

On Friday he had his first "psychotic episode".

"So how are you feeling Nagisa?"

The boy looked up towards the old man and hugged his penguin toy against his chest.

"I´m okay."

The doctor wrote something in his little notebook.

"So, your parents told me you have a little breakdown."

Nagisa thought about it. He had heard a lot of names to describe it but he wasn't sure which one was the right one. It was during recess. He was sitting alone eating his lunch in complete silence when he started hearing someone talk. He turned around but found no one around. After a while the voice returned but this time there were two of them. At first they were mumbling but when the kid started paying attention to them he noticed they were talking about a big storm. Suddenly Nagisa started feeling scared. He close his eyes but the voice just grew louder and then the images arrived; images and scenes of destruction and the sea swallowing ships, people, animals.

The urge to scream was too much. All he wanted was them to go away, to leave him alone.

Rin, Rin, Rin…

Nagisa opened his eyes but the image of his friend´s father being eaten by the sea stayed. The next thing he remembered was hearing himself screaming at the top of his lungs.

"I just started screaming." he tried to excuse himself. "I didn´t do anything bad."

"Your teacher told your parents you started screaming out of nowhere. That is not something normal and I think you know it." Nagisa didn´t liked the man. "And she also said you look terrified. What made you so scared?"

The boy thought about it for a second. "They told me he is going to get hurt."

The old man put the notebook away and stared at Nagisa with curious eyes. "Who told you that?"

Nagisa raised his shoulders. He wasn´t sure who they were any way but the doctor wasn´t going to let it go.

"Your imaginary friends?"

Nagisa shook his head.

"No, Miyaki hasn´t been around lately. They were different. They sounded angry and scary. I don´t like them. And they showed me ugly things. I didn´t like that either."

The doctor took a couple of notes and the interview continued. After almost two hours he was taken to a small room next to the doctor´s office where he played with some of the toys. That day the doctor prescribed him some purple pills he had to take every morning after breakfast and one before going to be.

Two nights later The Storm hit Iwatobi killing almost 50 sailors.

Rin didn´t returned to the club after that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The words in this formant **bolder** are the voices talking  
>  _Italic_ : Nagisa´s thoughts.  
> 

Chapter 2  
  
 _“We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”_  
  
  
Nagisa learned to live with the voices. He learned how to shut them at day and let them speak freely at night, when he could hit his head against the wall or put music at the maximum volume so he could scream whenever he needed to. His doctors believed the voices were just a chemical response to some kind of stressful moment or some crap. His parents believed that even though his doctors kept giving him pills he was going to turn into a normal boy someday. That went on and on until the three parts understood Nagisa wasn´t going to be a normal boy.  
  
In four years his anxiety went from bad to worse. His social abilities changed drastically and even though they were less recurrent, the screaming remained. It was involuntary and mostly appeared whenever the voices showed him ugly images, scenes of people´s deaths.  
  
When he turned 9, he returned to the Iwatobi Swimclub where he found new friends. The first one he related with was with Makoto. He was one year older than him.  
  
 **Just like Rin…**  
  
Makoto was kind, a little bit shy but nice. He had brown hair, green eyes and was a little taller than the rest of the kids. He started talking to him after the coach asked him to. The boy had reached him during his second day back at the club. He reached him after the practice by asking him about the cartoon on his towel. They spent about 10 minutes talking about the show from where the cartoon came from and after that Makoto introduced him to Haru, his best friend.  
  
Haru was other thing. He was serious, with carbon black hair and deep blue eyes. They exchanged a couple of words and then Nagisa was forced to leave.  
  
“Did you make any friends?” asked his mother with real concern. Nagisa, who was staring at the window didn´t hear her.  
  
 **Haru will make this bad. He will hurt… He is going to hurt.**  
  
“Nagi?” his older sister called him from the front seat. “Did you have fun?”  
  
This time the boy reacted. “Yeah, it was fun.”  
  
“Did you make new friends?” repeated his mother.  
  
Nagisa thought about it for a second. “There was a boy who also likes Adventure Time so we talked about it for a while.”  
  
His mother didn´t add anything but Nagisa was able to read the aura of happiness coming from her body. That was good, he supposed. Since his first attack he had tried to so hard to make his mother and father happy and, even when he thought he had succeeded, something bad happened to destroy his childish illusion. So now, that the simple mention of a friend, made his mother smile in joy, he assumed if he said he had two friends the happiness would be double.  
  
“And he introduced me to his friend; their names are Makoto and Haru.”  
  
This time the two girls inside the car smiled.  
  
“They have girly names like you Nagisa!” screamed his sister.  
  
The boy nodded and then the conversation passed from him to a dialogue between his sister and his mother about some homecoming dance on her school at the end of the month. Nagisa used the distraction to pass his attention to the view through the window.  
  
 **Stop crying like a baby**  
  
 _Shut up!_ , thought the boy as he whipped a tear off his cheek. He couldn’t believe his thoughts had gone from Makoto to Rin. His mother wouldn´t like that, she didn´t like to see him sad or angry, and whenever she saw any of those the pills came. He hated them. He hated the way they made him feel and the fact that they had no effect over the voices.  
  
 **He will be back. He will always come back.**


	3. Look like an innocent flower but be the serpent under it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nagisa´s voices seem really interested in Rin

A year later Rin returned. It was a big shock for everyone who knew Rin from before but Nagisa wasn't surprised at all, the voices had warned him about that. Nagisa thought would go back to normal. They would become friends again and maybe...maybe the voices would finally leave him alone. But reality was different.

As soon as he returned, Rin became curious about Haru. They barely talked but Nagisa could see how Rin's face would change whenever Haru was around, the way his smile went wider and his eyes got that sparkle that didn't appeared when he was with Nagisa. Adding to that, Rin was now in the same group with Haru and Makoto so they spend even more time together. Not that Nagisa was jealous or anything, it was more like he felt like an outsider. But the worst part of the picture wasn't that. It seemed as time went the voices grew louder and stronger. They didn't show him deaths or ugly stuff but they talked and talked about Haru and Rin.

"So why did you moved?" one day Makoto asked after practice.

"What?"

Nagisa also blinked surprised. Haru remained serious.

"Yeah, Nagisa told us you used to go to Iwatobi when you were younger."

"Well, I used to but then we had to move, not a big deal."

"You are evading the question so it means you are hiding something." added Haru. Nagisa's blood went cold as he saw the expression of Rin's face. He looked between hurt and scared.

"I am not!"

"Yes, you are. And your anger just reaffirms it."

"Haru!"

"If he doesn't want to say it's his problem, not yours Haruka!"

The older ones stared at Nagisa surprised. He barely talked and when he did it was always cheerful and about incoherent stuff. "You think you can go around thinking you know everything but you don't! You don't know a thing!"

**We warned you, didn´t we?**

"Nagisa?"

Now the voices weren´t mumbling just whispers, they were talking, mocking him. The younger one took a deep breath and tried to push them away but he found it almost impossible. The three boys around him stared at him in shock, none of them sure how to act or what to do.

**Haru will be the cause, and when _it_ happens, there will be no turning back. **

He covered his ears and took several deeps breathes. He felt like he was about to have an attack and the voices weren't helping. "Why don't you just shut up!"

**You think this was bad?**

He was going to scream.

**You don´t know a thing!**

He was going to scream, he was...

Suddenly a pair of arms surrounded him. The embrace was soft but firm and suddenly the whispers became a word.

**Rin, Rin, Rin, Rin...**

"It's okay." said the redhead boy. Makoto had warned him just like the coach that Nagisa was a little bit special. Haru had gone to the point and described the boy as crazy. "I'm not mad. It is okay, you don't have to mad. Just relax."

Nagisa rested his head on the boy's shoulder and closed his eyes. His hands left his ears and his whole body relaxed making him almost fall on his knees. Te voices didn't stopped talking but they weren't as loud as before.

"I'm taking Nagisa home." said Rin as he turned to Makoto and Haru. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

Nagisa didn't walk home that afternoon. When Rin let him go the boy instantly fell on his knees shaking. Maybe he had stopped the scream but the rest of his body was suffering the after effect of the attack. So instead Rin decided to carry him home. It took a little longer and Rin had to stop a couple of times but at the end, Nagisa reached his house before 8.

"Safe and sound." said Rin with a huge smile on his face. Nagisa returned the gesture.

"Thank you Rin."

They stood in an awkward silenced for a couple of seconds. Nagisa wanted to say something but he felt odd, like if it was the wrong thing. Rin on the other hand wasn't going to leave his spot until he saw Nagisa enter to his house.

"I guess I should get going."

Nagisa looked down; it was now or never,

"Rin?"

"Yeah?"

"Why don't you talk about your father's death?"

Rin bit his bottom lip but didn't lowered his eyes.

"How do you know that? Who told you?" He hissed. Nagisa shook his eyes.

"No one."

"Liar!"

"I swear!"

"What do you know?!"

Nagisa thought if he should tell him he knew everything.

"What do you know Nagisa?!"

"He drowned!" He berated out. "He was sailing when the stormed hit!"

Rin's face relaxed but Nagisa saw another change. His eyes became watery and his cheeks turned bright red.

"How?"

"I don't know, I swear that I don't know."

Rin nodded and a couple of tears fell from his eyes.

"It doesn't matter; it's the same at the end. He is dead and talking about it or not it´s not going to bring him back."

Nagisa tried to hold the sob that was threatening to leave his throat. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."

For the second time in that evening Rin hugged Nagisa. "It wasn't your fault. And I don't care if you know about my dad...just..." He pulled Nagisa's chin up and made him look into his eyes. "Don't tell anyone, okay?"

Nagisa nodded and Rin planted a soft kiss on the forehead.

Rin never asked again how Nagisa knew about his dad.

Nagisa never touched Rin's father's topic again.

* * *

 

“I´m going to Australia next year.”

Nagisa nodded as he kept playing with the sand with his feet. He knew he was the first person Rin told about his scholarship and he couldn´t feel more proud of his friend. Rin was the one that was always pushing himself harder in order to get better and better, he wasn´t like Makoto, Haru or him that they just do it for fun. The blonde one was aware of Rin´s dream and maybe that was the only way to make it real. The problem was that he had a feeling it was a bad idea. He could sense that something bad would happen the moment he left Japan and his family and friends behind.

“For how long?”

“Maybe only for middle school, if I get another scholarship I could stay for high-school too.”

Nagisa nodded. “Six years. If you don´t just decide you want to go to college there.”

Rin sat next to Nagisa and put an arm around his shoulders. “I will come back during breaks, like in winter and summer. It´s not like I will be gone forever.”

When he turned to see the older one he felt a tear slip from his eye.

**Take a good look, maybe a picture.**

Rin washed away that tear and the rest that kept running down his cheeks. He was sobbing softly and suddenly his head found steadiness on Rin´s shoulder. The sea behind them was calm but Nagisa knew a storm was coming. Not too strong but he could sense danger; or maybe it came from Rin.

“I don´t want you gone. I need you.”

“You still have the other guys. You will not be alone. I promise.”

**He is so naïve.**

Nagisa looked up and shook his head. “When are you telling them?”

Rin smiled. “After the race, I don´t want them to lose focus.”

“Then why you told me before?”

Rin thought about it for a moment making Nagisa uncomfortable. Now he was afraid of the answer.

“Because you are like me best friend.” Rin suddenly blushed. “You are like my little brother.”

Nagisa couldn´t help to smile at the comment but he didn´t add anything. He let himself fall over Rin´s shoulder again and there, in silence, sitting in the empty beach, waited for the sunset. _The sea is calm now but the storm is coming._ Nagisa hugged his legs closer to his chest and focused his attention on Rin´s hear beating instead of the voices that were talking between each other making no sense between them. Some talked about the storm, others about Haru but the louder ones were warning about Rin´s danger. He closed his eyes and let the salty breeze hit him in the face.

  _Rin will come back,_ he thought, _he will always come back._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, hope you liked the chapter. Please, leave your reviews and comments!


	4. Mom, do you hear me? Of course you didn't. You would have heard me screaming like a lunatic.

Chapter 4 Part 1

The pool felt too empty without the red-haired boy and Nagisa couldn't help to pay a little more attention to the voices. They talked abut Rin. They told him how he was doing and where he was. The problem was that lately the voices seemed...upset. They talked one over each other, telling the other wrong and screaming when they weren´t paid attention to. Nagisa tried to ignore them but they were too loud most of the times. He would cover his ears in a desperate way to make them shut up and sometimes took double doses of his morning pills.

"Nagisa?" asked Makoto as he sat next to the little blonde guy inside the locker room. "Are you okay?"

Nagisa thought about it for a moment. His head was about to explode, he hadn't slept for almost two days and the single thought of entering to the pool (where there was no way he could ignore the voices) made him sick and dizzy.

"Yeah." He said carelessly as he brushed his hair away from his face."I was just...thinking.

Makoto nodded slowly.

"You miss Rin, isn't it?"

Nagisa couldn't help but blush.

"Haru misses him as well. We all do."

But Nagisa knew it wasn't true. Makoto missed Rin but it wasn't like they were best friends or anything like that. Plus, the voice always told him that one part of Makot was glad that Rin was gone. He couldn't understand why but Nagisa had learned the voices were always right. On the other hand he was aware that Haru had strong feelings for Rin and that made Nagisa uncomfortable. He knew that it was stupid, but the voices would never stop warning him that something bad would happen to Rin because of Haru. He wasn't sure how would it be but they sounded pretty serious about the issue.

"He promised he would call during the winter holidays if he returned home." He mumbled.

"Well, that is one month away from now. Don't worry about it, he will call."

But the voices were telling other things.

"Yeah." He sighed and tried to force a smile."I guess you are right."

The rest of the practice went as usual. The voices decided to let him alone for a while and at the end the coach told him his mother had called to tell him to walk him home. It looked like the meeting at her office would take longer than usual and she wasn't going to be able to pick him up like she usually did.

"I can go in my own." said the kid with faint voice to the coach. "Everyone does and it's not even dark."

"We both know that is not the reason you can't go on your own."

"I used to go with Rin and the others before!"

"I'm sorry Nagisa. Those are your mother's specific orders."

Nagisa cursed inside his mind the moment he forgot to take one of his pills and had a seizure during recess during his first week of sixth grade. He lowered his gaze and bit his lip.

"But I took my medicine and the doctor said I am better." He sighed more to himself than to the coach. The man was about to answer with another negative when another student approached them.

"I can walk him home."

The coach blinked surprised. It wasn't usual to hear Haru talk and it was even weirder the fact that he wanted to interact with other students. Makoto, who was standing behind him smiled at the coach."Haru is going to spend the night at his grandma's and she lives near Nagisa's house."

The blonde one smiled widely. "See? I wouldn't be walking alone!"

The coach thought about it. He had other stuff to do and Nagisa indeed had progressed during e last couple of months. Maybe spending time with people of his age would make him gain security and confidence, maybe treating him like a normal kid would help him get to the path to becoming one.

"Okay guys, but you better get going. Nagisa's mom expects him there before 8 and she wants him to call her when you get home." The three boys nodded and after giving thanks they left the place.

 

* * *

 

"So, where are you heading for middle school?" asked Makoto.

"I'm going to enter a private school on the neighbor city." He answered calmly. "My mom and dad think it is good for me to go to a school were the groups are smaller."

Makoto nodded. Everyone in the club was aware that since Rin's departure, Nagisa had seemed unable to relate to other kids as good as before.

"But you will keep swimming, right?"

Nagisa looked up to Haru.

"I am not sure. I would like to but it will be up to my family."

"And if you go a little more or less crazier."

"Haru!"

The three boys stopped in front of Makoto's house.

"That's the truth!"

"But you can say stuff like that!"

Nagisa shook his head. The voices had returned and they sounded angry but at the same time scared. "It's okay." He mumbled. Haru and Makoto stared at him confused. "I mean, everyone knows I am crazy. It isn't like it's a secret or anything…” but he stopped in the middle of the sentence. The voices…they sounded frantic, almost desperate.

 **He is running, running, running, but they are faster.** **They are going to hurt him.**

"Nagisa?" Makoto leaned to the younger boy and touched his shoulder. The boy seemed paler and his bottom lip was shaking softly. "Is everything..."

"Makoto!"

The three boys looked up and saw two little kids run down the stairs that lead to a small house. The green eyed boy was suddenly tackled by two pair of arms and Nagisa was able to hide behind Haru. There were more voice talking than usual and they seemed to get louder with every second. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Sorry about my siblings." He mumbled as he took the young girl on his arms. The little boy just held him by the jacket.

"Makoto dinner is ready. We are having pizza tonight!" said the little girl.

"My mom and dad are waiting, let’s go!"

Makoto smiled at them and then turned towards Haru that seemed more focused on the boy standing behind him.

"I have to go now. I'll see you on Monday, okay?"

The two other boys nodded and after a brief goodbye, Haru and Nagisa started heading towards Nagisa's house.

**They got him.**   
**They are going to hurt him.**   
**Do you feel it?**   
**No one to listen to him, no one to hears his screams.**

"Nagisa?"

The blonde one was too focused on the voice he almost forgot he was walking next to Haru.

"I'm sorry, I think I just zoned off."

Haru couldn't help to frown. "Does that happen a lot?"

"Sometimes."

He was trying so hard to keep the voices under control that when the image came it felt almost like a punch in the guts. He fell on his knees and lost the ability to breath for a couple of seconds. The image wasn't clear but it felt horrible. He distinguished Rin laying on a white floor with only one blue towel covering him from his shoulders to his thighs. He was screaming but he wasn't angry, he was terrified.

"Nagisa?" Haru fell on his knees as well and stared at the boy. "What's wrong?"

The next image were shadows, they were laughing and getting taller and wider. The image focused on Rin again, trying to escape but hitting with a wall, he was trapped.

 **Trapped, trapped, alone, alone** …

Nagisa closed his eyes but the images were still inside his head and the voices were mixed with screams, Rin's screams.

"Nagisa!" Haru screamed as he saw the boy curl a little bit more, like if he was about to vomit.

**_Scream!_ **

Nagisa put his hand over his ears and screamed at the top of his lungs. It was a high pitched screamed that made Haru jump back and cover his own ears. It wasn't a normal scream; it was too loud, too strong, too agonizing. After almost 10 seconds Nagisa finally stopped screaming and his whole body began to shake.

"No, no, no." he repeated almost breathless as he let his head fall between his shoulders.

Haru, on the other hand was staring at his left hand, it had a line of blood running from his palm to his wrist. He blinked twice and touched his ear again feeling a warm liquid running down it. He thought Nagisa had said something but his voice sounded too far away. He felt like if he had a tapon over them that stopped the sound to enter to his ears.

“I am bleeding.” Nagisa looked up to Haru and gasped in horror. Haru was still covering his left ear in a childish attempt to stop the bleeding. Nagisa touched his own ears but they seemed just fine. The two boys stared at each other for a couple of seconds before Nagis burst out in tears.


	5. Deaths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Banshee: Spirit in the form of a wailing woman who appears to or is heard by members of a family/friends as a sign that one of them is about to die.

“Please don´t leave me here.”

He whimpered as the nurse turned off the light of his room inside the _Looney-house._ He repeated the same phrase over and over until he fell asleep. His parents had left him there for two weeks, afraid he was getting worse instead of getting better. It didn´t mattered anyways. Here, there, the voices kept speaking. No matter what pill he took, he still felt like crap. And the worst part was that his mother had forgotten (or decided not) to visit him.

**Nagisa?**

He moved under the covers, not able to relax.

**Today**

That was it. The mumbles that had driven him mad during the last two weeks suddenly became so clear he was afraid he had imagined them. He opened his eyes and stared at the window. It was almost dawn. In fact, he had slept for a while.

Quietly trying to avoid waking up his roommate, a boy with anorexia and OCD, he stood up and stared gathering his things. The voices kept mumbling but Nagisa suddenly found it bearable. He put everything in a small suit case and waited sitting on his bed for the nurse to call him.

* * *

 

“I´m not crazy.” he hissed.

His father and mother were sitting in front of him across the kitchen table. They were telling him about something he _had_ to know before returning to class. It seemed they had opted to avoid the topic during his stay in the asylum to help him _recover._ Nagisa felt his lip quiver as he heard about the _awful_ death one of his classmates had during his absence.

 **You are not crazy.**  

 **“** She died instantly as she fell.” his dad said, unable to look up to face the kid.

“I´m not crazy.” Nagisa smiled.

“Are you listening to us?” his mother replied, clearly bothered at the reaction of her son. “Do you understand what this means?”

“Yes.” the smile disappeared from his lips as he _truly_ understood what it meant. “I´m not crazy.”

* * *

 

During the rest of middle school Nagisa visited the Asylum four times, his medication was changed 7 times and were 9 _mysterious_ deaths in the school. Most of them looked accidental but some suicides made Nagisa wonder if the voices caused those deaths or they just announced them. He always saw them three or five days before the event. There were only two deaths that the voices didn´t warn with so much anticipation and one that they didn´t warned him at all, the last one.

It was the last day of school and one day before the graduation ceremony. It happened during the second class and so quickly no one had time to even react. It was a boy named Kiba and it was a loaded gun. The boy stood up in the middle of the class and took out the gun of his bag. He was sitting next to Nagisa.

The teacher didn´t move, some girls screamed but most of the students jumped away from them.

“You killed them.” he said as he pointed the gun at him.

Nagisa shook his head. “I don´t know…”

The boy hit his desk violently and threw his stuff at the floor.

“Yes you do.”

Nagisa looked up and saw the gun now pointing at his nose.

“No.”

Kiba was staring at him with so much rage in his eyes he truly thought he was going to kill him.

“Stop lying.” Kiba took him by the hair and made him stand up and face his classmates. “They think you are crazy but you and I know better, don´t we?”

“I don´t know what you are talking about.”

“Yes you do.”

**He knows.**

Nagisa closed his eyes but Kiba pulled his hair again.

“You knew they were going to die. You knew and did nothing.”

The gun was now pressing against his neck.

“I´m sorry.” He cried out of nowhere.

“You are not!”

“Stop it!” one of the girls screamed out and suddenly she was followed by the rest of the group. Nagisa closed his eyes but didn´t attempt to move or run away. There was no escape.

**Don´t worry.**

“I know what you are.”

**Only one corpse will leave this class room.**

Nagisa took a deep breath, he understood.

“You are not human.” Suddenly Nagisa found himself free of the grip of his hair and the gun disappeared. “Have you heard of the wailing woman?”

**At it will not be you.**

Nagisa could not move. Behind him Kiba put the gun over his temple.

“Banshee.”

Nagisa´s scream covered the terrifying sound of the gunshot.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry is short


	6. What if that nothing is something and that something is something dangerous?

If elementary school was a nightmare, middle school was hell. Not only his parents had put him in a private school on the neighbor city but the doctors gave him stronger medications and he had to quit swimming. It was blow after blow, after blow on Nagisa´s opinion.

“Just breathe.”

He stood up as he turned out his morning alarm and stretched his sore arms and legs.

“Everyhing…” he took a long look at the mirror. “will be okay.”

He put on his school uniform and swallowed two yellow pills without the need of a glass of water. After breakfast he would have to take another pair of pills: one to keep him awake for the rest of the day and the other to keep the voices as silent as possible.

He took the school bus at the same time he did every day and sat on the last line of seats next to the right window. His parents had assured him that was one of the finest schools around and the fact that it had little groups made his parents jump in joy. Like if traumatizing fifteen teenagers wasn´t as bad as traumatizing 35. He hated his school. He hated his classmates but mostly, he hated the fact of being a freak. No one ever sat next to him on the bus or at lunch. Whenever they had group projects he usually ended being the only that wasn´t chosen or worse, most of the time he ended up working alone. He hated how everyone there acted like they were the best of the best when most of them were hypocrites and vicious.

“Hey, Blondie!” Nagisa looked up just to find one of the oldest boy staring at him. He was almost twice the size of Nagisa but was as brilliant as a rock. “Do you have something for me?”

Nagisa sighed and took out a piece of paper filled with the answers of the boy´s exam. Again, he was stupid while Nagisa could brag that he was one of the smartest students in the school.

That was something he had learned in middle school: in the world there are three kinds of bullying. First was indifference and at the beginning it wasn´t that bad. People ignored him, it wasn´t such a big deal. Until he noticed it was. His classmates didn´t even remembered his name or speak a word to him. They wouldn´t even answer him whenever he made them a direct questions. It was annoying at some point but when Nagisa thought it coldly, it wasn´t as bad as the other two.

The second kind of bullying was a little obvious but not direct: rejection. It started after his second month in school and it was a small change from the previous situation. When he usually got silence for answer he started getting “no” or “I don´t know”, “I don´t care” or the worse, “Fuck off”. He couldn´t understand the change. Was he annoying? Did he bother them in any way? Later he understood, they knew about his ´problem´ and they seem to be mad by the fact that they had to share a classroom with him. Like if he had asked for it.

The third type of bullying was the traditional one. It started during his second semester of first year of middle school and… it was bad. People laughed at him, picked on him, some time they would even physically abuse him. Not that he ever complained. He couldn´t care less at that point whenever he had friends or people hated him. It was the best after all.

The bus stopped after 30 minutes of traveling in front of a new building and waited for the noisy kids to get down of it. Nagisa put his bag over his back and followed the flow of students inside the school. The last time he had friends things got shitty after a while. His best friend´s father passed and he almost left Haruka deaf during sixth grade.Loneliness was better. No one got hurt, no one except him.

 

* * *

 

He hated math. He was good at it but he hated it. He hated the way the teacher would embarrass people whenever he passed them to the board to answer one of his impossible questions and the stupid numbers that would jump up and down when he forgot to take his pills.

“Hazuki?”

Nagisa looked up dazzled at the sudden sound of his last name. The teacher, a middle age man with bottle glasses and the posture of an old butler, was staring at him with a serious grin written over his face. An unsolved problem was written in the middle of the board.

“Would you mind resolving the equation.”

The boy looked at the problem for a second and then turned his gaze to his notebook. He was getting dizzy and his hands were already shaking. He took a deep breath; that usually happened whenever he forgot to take his pills but that wasn´t the case.

**What´s the deal kid?**

Nagisa reached the board and looked at the numbers one time more. Letters and numbers were staring to dance making it really hard to read them.

**You don´t like us anymore?**

He wrote the first equation but he couldn´t figure out what to do next.

**That´s why you put so many drugs inside your system? To ignore us?**

“Hazuki?” the teacher, who was standing next to him, said as he erased a plus sign he had wrote down. “It is a minus sign not a plus… Are you feeling okay?”

**But you can´t do that.**

Nagisa looked down at his feet. “No, I can do it. I just got distracted, sorry.”

**Because everybody here knows that we are not an illness.**

The teacher nodded and took a couple of steps back. Nagisa kept working on the problem.

**We are real and we…**

The numbers started dancing again and he felt the grip of his hand around the marker go weaker and weaker.

**will not…**

The voices were multiplying and they grew powerful with each word. As he tried to catch his breath and his balance he felt the floor beneath him slowly disappear. Suddenly the air felt too thick and the room grew smaller.

**be ignored!**

He closed his eyes trying to block everything, the room, the teacher, the students. When he opened his eyes instead of the board, he found himself staring at a black space: no roof, floor or walls, just him and a little dot that grew bigger as it flew towards Nagisa.

He looked around trying to find an escape but his body refused to move an inch. It was like if only his mind was there, like in his dreams.

**You thought you had it rough?**

The voices, always inside his head, now sounded like if they stood around him. The dot was now like the size of a ball and as he grew closer Nagisa was able to see some shadows moving inside the luminous circle.

“Stop it.”

**Why don´t we show you the real show?**

He couldn´t even close his eyes so when the luminous figure, now a rectangle and with the size of a tv, he saw clear as day the image of one of his classmates. Tomo, a brunette girl with big glases and shorthair, Nagisa recognized her as one of the smartest girl in the class. In the image the girl was running down the stairs with a lot of hurry. For a moment Nagisa feared the vision would be the same as Rin´s. He feared he was going to see the girl get _hurt._

**Not quite.**

The girl turned in a corner and kept running as she secured her bag over her shoulders. Suddenly she tripped.

Nagisa tried to close his eyes again but it was useless, he saw every hit and every movement the fragile body of Tomo as she fell down the stairs. The final hit was in the last step where the girl hit the back of her neck with it.

Finally he was able to close his eyes and avoid the vision of the lifeless body of his classmate. When he reopened them he found himself again in front of the board where, instead of the answer, he had written all over it the phrase: Stop It. But that was not the worst part. As he turned around and his eyes met Tomo´s, who was sitting in the first row of sits, he felt the urge to scream.

**Come on kid, we know you need to.**

Nagisa took a couple steps back before falling on his knees and covered his ears. He had to control it, he knew he couldn´t but he was trying so hard.

**Go on…**

He couldn´t do it. Before closing his eyes he took a last glimpse of Tomo and then he screamed at the top of his lungs.


End file.
